 |
| Buy the ticket, take the ride. |
The “firsts” start to dry up as Major League Soccer’s history moves closer to the present – does adding a new team really count in a league that adds two a season? - but 2006 saw a few. The Chicago Fire opened the league’s third soccer-specific stadium up in Bridgeview, Illinois (per franchise tradition, it was a mixed bag) and the ridiculously-named New York/New Jersey MetroStars became the no less ridiculously-named New York Red Bulls (or Red Bull New York, I can never truly remember). Parenthetical specifics aside, both moves amounted to what the domestic top-flight needed more than anything else: long-term investment and stability.
The biggest on-field change saw the San Jose Earthquakes move to Houston, Texas for the 2006 season. It didn’t look great, but it looked nothing like the contraction that culled the Florida teams after the 2001 regular season (my notes here). In fact, a general failure to invest in the San Jose market prompted the move, not league-wide financial struggles. I’ll get to all that and more, but, to paraphrase a line from the Jaws 3 trailer, the 2006 season was unusually personal.
Soccer fans talk about “bleeding” for their teams all the time, and of “living and dying on every goal.” I don’t do that. In fact, I can count on the number of games that transported me to real rapture on two hands at most. To name two that should give you some idea of where I set the bar, the United States Men’s 3-2 win over Portugal in their 2002 World Cup opener and the Portland Timbers’ famous double-post victory over Sporting Kansas City make the cut. (Another is highly personal, a random league game that saw Liverpool put four goals past Newcastle in a back-and-forth barn-burner they ultimately won; I took a shot of gin for every goal Liverpool scored that season, and it took some work to talk the bartender into honoring the tradition). I’ve got moments where joy and rage boiled over by the hundreds, but it takes a lot to get me to transcendence.
The biggest on-field change saw the San Jose Earthquakes move to Houston, Texas for the 2006 season. It didn’t look great, but it looked nothing like the contraction that culled the Florida teams after the 2001 regular season (my notes here). In fact, a general failure to invest in the San Jose market prompted the move, not league-wide financial struggles. I’ll get to all that and more, but, to paraphrase a line from the Jaws 3 trailer, the 2006 season was unusually personal.
Soccer fans talk about “bleeding” for their teams all the time, and of “living and dying on every goal.” I don’t do that. In fact, I can count on the number of games that transported me to real rapture on two hands at most. To name two that should give you some idea of where I set the bar, the United States Men’s 3-2 win over Portugal in their 2002 World Cup opener and the Portland Timbers’ famous double-post victory over Sporting Kansas City make the cut. (Another is highly personal, a random league game that saw Liverpool put four goals past Newcastle in a back-and-forth barn-burner they ultimately won; I took a shot of gin for every goal Liverpool scored that season, and it took some work to talk the bartender into honoring the tradition). I’ve got moments where joy and rage boiled over by the hundreds, but it takes a lot to get me to transcendence.
MLS Cup 2006 was another one.
Two very clear memories stand out: first, Taylor Twellman’s elation after scoring the New England Revolution’s first-ever goal over three (3) MLS Cups. I didn’t even remember Twellman’s goal until I watched the (short and ever blurrier) highlights this morning, but it’s a beauty – and put a pin in Khano Smith, the player who set up Twellman. I could have walked you through what happened after without watching a thing, especially how it played out in ABC’s broadcast: there was the usual celebrating (Twellman looked excited enough to run across the country after the goal), followed by the resetting for the kickoff; due to the timing and gravity of the moment, the cameras followed the reset for a while, probably hunting after player reactions; after lingering on Twellman pulling up his socks, the feed returned to Houston Dynamo attack already in progress; they’d gotten behind New England’s midfield and Houston attackers rushed against a back-pedaling Revolution defense; a long diagonal floated into New England’s area from the right and found Dynamo forward, Brian Ching, who reached the ball with a fading lean – this goal I remember (because trauma) – to head home Houston’s equalizer. Just 71 seconds separated the goals. You knew how the game would end after that, even when it went to penalties; a team that had struggled like New England just doesn’t recover from a blow like that.
I haven’t felt a low like that watching soccer before or since. This was before Portland had a team and, because Boston was the last city I lived in that I liked, I attached to the Revolution. I’d followed them through every goal-less minute of their first, improbable MLS Cup in 2002, then all of MLS Cup 2005, when they never really got going, and then the full, fighting 90 minutes plus most of stoppage in MLS Cup 2006. All that time waiting for one goddamn goal and a real shot at lifting the trophy, and Twellman finally delivered...and then it was gone. It was like playing with a bunch of puppies all day and being told at the end that, no, you can’t take one home and which one was your favorite because that’s the one they really want to euthanize. Shock, meet sorrow. (Here’s video of the full broadcast of MLS Cup 2006 for anyone wanting to relive the whole awful experience; the video’s better than the highlights and, no, I didn't watch it. Yet. Maybe. See below.)
New England remained one of the league’s better teams in 2006. They returned most of the same line-up they did as MLS Cup runner-up in 2005 – e.g, Twellman, Pat Noonan, Clint Dempsey, and Steve Ralston lead the attack, while Michael Parkhurst, Jay Heaps and Shalrie Joseph anchored the back and middle – so they just needed new players here and there to nudge themselves over the top. Khano Smith was one of them. His mystery started with his country of origin – Berumda, hardly a hot-bed for any game, never mind soccer – but he never presented as a starter, no matter how many times he did. More than anything else, Smith was a big, powerful runner, a player to stretch the field vertically thereby giving the Revs a new way around defenses. He arrived late in 2006, but you saw him succeed in his primary role right away; defenses were stretched, etc. That was exciting too – who doesn’t like options? - but, the longer Smith’s time with New England continued (or dragged), the more he became one of those players that fanned endless arguments. Some held that he had the tools and just needed a more time (cue the infamous counter-factual, “if only the coach would use him right”), while others held he took up one of the more valuable spots on the roster without providing commensurate value. To translate that to the modern age (for Timbers fans anyway), I’d already had the conversation about Dairon Asprilla many years before.
Something else about the 2006 Revs that stuck with me was the difference between having good players and having them avaiable to play. Noonan missed most of the season to injury and the World Cup (and the warm-ups before it) kept Dempsey away through the season’s middle; because he never got sick or injured (srsly, the O.G. MLS Iron Man), carrying the attack fell to Ralston to the point where he played as a forward now and then: even a well-oiled machine can’t run without its parts. Any time the gang was all there, they had a powerful team – and that included MLS Cup when they started the relatively unsung Welshman, Andy Dorman, to cover for a hobbled Dempsey (Dorman, also pressed to cover absences, turned in a 6g, 10a season). And it was so very nearly enough…which brings the conversation to Houston…which hadn’t existed to that point.
First, I couldn’t resist this wee moment of tone-deaf history (close your eyes and imagine it's 2020):
“The team was renamed from Houston 1836 to the Dynamo prior to starting the season after objections from the area's Hispanic communities over its reference to the year 1836, which marked both the city's founding and Texas's independence from Mexico.”
As teased above, after failing to find both a local ownership group and a way to fund a soccer-specific stadium (hey, land’s cheap in Texas), the San Jose Earthquakes relocated to Houston after the 2005 season. Also noted in earlier posts (and more than once), they relocated a very strong pre-fab team, one with two MLS Cups in the trophy cabinet and strong seasons all ‘round those championship seasons. Still, if you’ve ever moved, you know it trips your shit up for a while; you’ve got get hold of the lay of the land and find your comfort zone in a new city, and you never thought it’d take that long to get everything out of the boxes, etc. While the bigger American leagues had experience relocating franchises, I believe that the ‘Quakes move to Houston constitutes the one and only time that happened in MLS.
The Dynamo hardly started 2006 like an expansion side (fwiw, that link takes you to the 2006 Form Guide, which maps the seasons for all 12 teams). Their 7-3-6 record by the season’s mid-point knocked down any talk of “expansion blues” before they could start. And, while they didn’t win their conference – FC Dallas finally got its shit together after 2-3 wretched defensive seasons and beat ‘em clean – Houston finished second in the West, not far off Dallas and with an identical goal-differential to New England’s, just with more goals for and against (44gf, 40 ga to the Revs’ 39gf, 35 ga). Both MLS Cup finalists shared something else as well: the need to manage disruptions that follows from success. Wikipedia’s write-ups on each MLS Cup has reliably given the best details from each season through this project (just to note it; and here’s the best one-stop portal to all this material), and that’s where I found this:
“To mitigate the loss of Ching, the Dynamo signed Scottish striker Paul Dalglish and relied more heavily on attacking midfielder Dwayne De Rosario, who recorded ten goals and five assists by late September.”
Dalglish, yes, the son of the Liverpool legend, served a similar purpose to Khano Smith. He barely dipped a toe into MLS (11 games in all; think it was injuries), but he made his place in Houston history for the brace that carried Houston past the Colorado Rapids in the Western Conference Finals (what happened to Dallas? the usual), but it was the regulars that carried the Dynamo through everything else. Key pieces remained healthy all season – the defense (e.g., Craig Waibel, Eddie Robinson and Ryan Cochrane) and defensive midfield (e.g., Ricardo Clark), especially, all managed to start most games in 2006 – and that bought the big guns (e.g., Ching and DeRosario) time to figure out how to shine. The 4-4-2 diamond the Dynamo started in MLS Cup(?) matches how I remember them playing, with Brian Mullan and Brad Davis either supporting the player at the base of the diamond defensively (usually Clark, but due to suspension, Adrien Serioux started MLS Cup 2006) and keying off the same player to launch the attack. 2006 also started Davis’ rise as one of MLS’s better assist machines (he had 11 that season).
As long as it was, the above meditation on Houston and New England establishes a kind of baseline for how success worked in MLS circa 2006. It remained a fairly unglamorous league, one that could only dream of the big, team-altering signings that have defined MLS since…well, I figure I’ll get to it, but I’d put the date somewhere after the first seasons of the designated-player era and a couple seasons before roster construction arcana like TAM and GAM gave fans the league they have today. Those limitations forced teams to get more out of rosters that couldn’t afford to change much season to season, and that made coaches matter more. A team still had to have good enough players, obviously – this is what killed, say, the Columbus Crew, the Kansas City Wizards, and the Fire – but, in Dominic Kinnear and Steve Nicol, Houston and the Revs (respectively) had two of the savviest operators of their era – e.g., the 2000s. If I had to put my money on what separated the two 2006 MLS Cup finalists from the 4-5 teams that matched them on paper, that’s where I’d put it.
And that’s where this post will go from here – i.e., briefly wrap up what happened with the other 10 teams that competed in MLS in 2006. Before marching through that, I wanted to start with a general note and one telling detail that follows from it. First, the average number of goals scored tightened up quite a bit – from 45.9 goals scored/allowed in 2005 (aka, the first expansion season; discussed here) to 41.9 in 2006, the second lowest total to that point in MLS history. (2004 set the record at 39.2, and it only just edged 2002’s 42.1 average). Two fairly straightforward realities caused the shift to a lower gear. First, both expansion teams – Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA – took major steps to rethink their rosters – as I’ll (briefly) detail below. Second, and this goes back to the paragraph above, catching up to the pack simply wasn’t as hard then as it is today; all the teams pulled from the same shallow talent pool, and that made most advantages a team could gain over another equal parts marginal and situational. The two things to watch for below are, 1) how close most teams kept to the scoring average (and, related, how few teams really strayed that far from it), and 2) where RSL and Chivas USA finished in the 2006 standings. Only one of them made the playoffs, but do note how close the other one came…
All right, time for the round up. With an eye to preparing the future expansion (not to mention the pre-COVID explosive expansion), I’ll try to keep them informative as they are short. And I think I’ll organize them by record this time. Here goes…
DC United (15-7-10, 55 pts., 52 gf, 38 ga (+14) 1st in East, Supporters’ Shield)
All but unstoppable for 2/3 of the season (only one L over their first 20 games), they went through a meat-grinder of the league’s toughest teams down the stretch and ultimately lost to the Revs the same way they did the season before (early goal, Twellman this time). They had a solid spine (Brian Carroll, Bobby Boswell, Facundo Erpen, Clyde Simms, Bryan Namoff), that stayed healthy and a strong second season from Christian Gomez (14g, 11a) and Jamie Moreno, incredibly, still kicking in (then) league-elite numbers (11g, 10a). A case for the coaching thesis.
FC Dallas (16-12-4, 52 pts., 48 gf, 44 ga (+4), 1st in West)
They almost matched DC over the first 20 games – hot start = classic Dallas – but they fell off (4-7-1) more than they faded down the stretch (a no-no for real contenders). This was the Dallas team I anticipated in the 2004(?) post: Eddie Johnson was gone by then, but rookie forward Kenny Cooper had the look of a future star (11g, 4a) and he paired with Carlos Ruiz (13g, 5a) like red wine and steak. Ronnie O’Brien and Richard Mulrooney provided the assists (20 between them) and they had a great spine…and it still wasn’t enough.
Houston Dynamo (11-8-13, 46 pts., 44 gf, 40 ga (+4), 2nd in West)
Houston Dynamo (11-8-13, 46 pts., 44 gf, 40 ga (+4), 2nd in West)
See above
New England Revolution (12-8-12, 48 pts, 39 gf, 35 ga (+4), 2nd in East)
See above.
Chicago Fire (13-11-8, 47 pts., 43 gf, 41 ga (+2), 3rd in East, still within PKs of a conference final)
They pushed the Revs to the wall in the Eastern Conference Semifinals and that created a great natural rivalry between the teams that made that series a delight. Losing Ante Razov didn’t help exactly (what might have been), but a headless chicken committee made up for it (Andy Herron, 9g, 1a; Nate Jaqua, 8 g, 2a; Chris Rolfe, 7g, 1a; Chad Barrett, 5 g, 1a; even Justin Mapp’s numbers picked up to 2g, 8a). If anything hurt them it was another season on Chris Armas’ legs and Jim Curtin missing a lot of 2006.
Chivas USA (10-9-13, 43 pts., 45 gf, 42 ga (+3), 3rd in East)
For those wondering, Razov joined Chivas USA – and he did pretty well (14 goals; because Chivas USA no longer exists, MLS’s stats page doesn’t track their numbers). After their hubristic inaugural campaign, Chivas USA “America-ed up” real quick, picking up Jesse Marsch from Chicago, Tim Regan and Jason Hernandez (hugely underrated) from Red Bulls, plus adding future stars/bubble USMNT-ers, Jonathan Bornstein and Sacha Kljestan. That said, the biggest addition might have been Bob Bradley as head coach.
Colorado Rapids (11-13-8, 41 pts., 36 gf, 49 ga (-13), 4th in West, playoffs, miraculously)
They’d survived over the past 2-3 seasons by keeping scoring low on both sides average, but the defensive side flamed out badly in ’06, even if I can’t explain how, based on the personnel, the Rapids tied RSL for league-worst defense. What went wrong on the attacking side sums up pretty easily: Kyle Beckerman was the Rapids’ second leading scorer in 2006 with 7g, 2a.
New York Red Bulls (9-11-12, 39 pts., 41 gf, 41 ga (0), 4th in the West)
New York, on the other hand, had kept themselves in the conversation by running up the numbers on both sides of the average; they would revert to very close to average in ’06 and that stranded them mid-table, aka, the middle of nowhere. Their defense held up its end (benefitting from players staying healthy), but both Edson Buddle and Amada Guevara under-performed against past seasons and what supporting cast they had fit together like a Tinkertoy build by an 8-year-old.
Los Angeles Galaxy (11-15-6, 39 pts., 37 gf, 37 ga (0), 5th in West, no playoffs)
2006 saw luck dry up for 2005’s MLS winners. Landon Donovan (12 g, 8a) carried them as far as he could, but the old guard (e.g., Cobi Jones and Herculez Gomez) dried up and the new kid (e.g., Alan Gordon) didn’t bring the cavalry with him. The defense held up its end – and I can’t recall how many times I’ve said that about the Galaxy. Is it possible they hold the all-time record for goals allowed in MLS?
Kansas City Wizards (10-14-8, 38 pts., 43 gf, 45 ga (-2), 5th in East)
They had two truly random players as top producers – Scott Sealy (10g, 1a) and (how?) Jose Burciaga, Jr. (a fullback? 8g, 8a) – and an array of mediocrity after that. (Sasha Victorine gets a shout for a 3g, 8a season!). Jimmy Conrad, a key central defender, missed half the season, which made them like a mirror to New York – i.e., the attack did what it usually did…
Real Salt Lake (10-13-9, 39 pts., 45 gf, 49 ga (-4), 6th in West, two points out of playoffs)
Sure, they finished last. They also tied LA on points and shaved 10+ off their goals allowed (I’m not looking it up). As much as anything else, they called in current MLS talent – e.g., Jeff Cunningham (16 g, 11a) and Chris Klein – and, voila, they’re competitive. They raised Jason Kreis to his best late-stage season (8g, 5a) to boot. But they still needed a defense…
Columbus Crew (8-15-9, 33 pts., 30 g, 42a (-12), 6th in East)
I honestly have no memory of the Crew getting as bad as they did in the mid-2000s. I do, however, remember seeing them try to get away with Jason Garey as a starting forward for, like, two seasons and there's an overlap in there. To give a familiar diagnoses, the defense was fine, but they built an offense on second bananas – i.e., signing the second best attacking player from four teams and calling that your attack.
And…yes, that’s everything. Hope it didn’t go on too long, but there was some emotion involved. More than any season in my life, this one left scars. New England was my team back then. I started watching when they sucked and kept watching after their nerves gave out in two consecutive finals. As they kept getting better, they felt more like a team. In the intros to one of their…several MLS Cups (think it was 2007), Twellman and Noonan did a bit in the staged player introductions, something involving light choreography, and with a nod to cheerleading. It was dumb and funny and that's why I've always genuinely liked this particular team, probably more than any one I've ever supported. The plucky underdogs were coming good, dammit. So, seeing that team reach its crowning achievement after running into all those walls and for all those years…and then they hit another wall 71 seconds later.
Let's just say I re-evaluated the relationship between spectator sports and my personal happiness.
New England Revolution (12-8-12, 48 pts, 39 gf, 35 ga (+4), 2nd in East)
See above.
Chicago Fire (13-11-8, 47 pts., 43 gf, 41 ga (+2), 3rd in East, still within PKs of a conference final)
They pushed the Revs to the wall in the Eastern Conference Semifinals and that created a great natural rivalry between the teams that made that series a delight. Losing Ante Razov didn’t help exactly (what might have been), but a headless chicken committee made up for it (Andy Herron, 9g, 1a; Nate Jaqua, 8 g, 2a; Chris Rolfe, 7g, 1a; Chad Barrett, 5 g, 1a; even Justin Mapp’s numbers picked up to 2g, 8a). If anything hurt them it was another season on Chris Armas’ legs and Jim Curtin missing a lot of 2006.
Chivas USA (10-9-13, 43 pts., 45 gf, 42 ga (+3), 3rd in East)
For those wondering, Razov joined Chivas USA – and he did pretty well (14 goals; because Chivas USA no longer exists, MLS’s stats page doesn’t track their numbers). After their hubristic inaugural campaign, Chivas USA “America-ed up” real quick, picking up Jesse Marsch from Chicago, Tim Regan and Jason Hernandez (hugely underrated) from Red Bulls, plus adding future stars/bubble USMNT-ers, Jonathan Bornstein and Sacha Kljestan. That said, the biggest addition might have been Bob Bradley as head coach.
Colorado Rapids (11-13-8, 41 pts., 36 gf, 49 ga (-13), 4th in West, playoffs, miraculously)
They’d survived over the past 2-3 seasons by keeping scoring low on both sides average, but the defensive side flamed out badly in ’06, even if I can’t explain how, based on the personnel, the Rapids tied RSL for league-worst defense. What went wrong on the attacking side sums up pretty easily: Kyle Beckerman was the Rapids’ second leading scorer in 2006 with 7g, 2a.
New York Red Bulls (9-11-12, 39 pts., 41 gf, 41 ga (0), 4th in the West)
New York, on the other hand, had kept themselves in the conversation by running up the numbers on both sides of the average; they would revert to very close to average in ’06 and that stranded them mid-table, aka, the middle of nowhere. Their defense held up its end (benefitting from players staying healthy), but both Edson Buddle and Amada Guevara under-performed against past seasons and what supporting cast they had fit together like a Tinkertoy build by an 8-year-old.
Los Angeles Galaxy (11-15-6, 39 pts., 37 gf, 37 ga (0), 5th in West, no playoffs)
2006 saw luck dry up for 2005’s MLS winners. Landon Donovan (12 g, 8a) carried them as far as he could, but the old guard (e.g., Cobi Jones and Herculez Gomez) dried up and the new kid (e.g., Alan Gordon) didn’t bring the cavalry with him. The defense held up its end – and I can’t recall how many times I’ve said that about the Galaxy. Is it possible they hold the all-time record for goals allowed in MLS?
Kansas City Wizards (10-14-8, 38 pts., 43 gf, 45 ga (-2), 5th in East)
They had two truly random players as top producers – Scott Sealy (10g, 1a) and (how?) Jose Burciaga, Jr. (a fullback? 8g, 8a) – and an array of mediocrity after that. (Sasha Victorine gets a shout for a 3g, 8a season!). Jimmy Conrad, a key central defender, missed half the season, which made them like a mirror to New York – i.e., the attack did what it usually did…
Real Salt Lake (10-13-9, 39 pts., 45 gf, 49 ga (-4), 6th in West, two points out of playoffs)
Sure, they finished last. They also tied LA on points and shaved 10+ off their goals allowed (I’m not looking it up). As much as anything else, they called in current MLS talent – e.g., Jeff Cunningham (16 g, 11a) and Chris Klein – and, voila, they’re competitive. They raised Jason Kreis to his best late-stage season (8g, 5a) to boot. But they still needed a defense…
Columbus Crew (8-15-9, 33 pts., 30 g, 42a (-12), 6th in East)
I honestly have no memory of the Crew getting as bad as they did in the mid-2000s. I do, however, remember seeing them try to get away with Jason Garey as a starting forward for, like, two seasons and there's an overlap in there. To give a familiar diagnoses, the defense was fine, but they built an offense on second bananas – i.e., signing the second best attacking player from four teams and calling that your attack.
And…yes, that’s everything. Hope it didn’t go on too long, but there was some emotion involved. More than any season in my life, this one left scars. New England was my team back then. I started watching when they sucked and kept watching after their nerves gave out in two consecutive finals. As they kept getting better, they felt more like a team. In the intros to one of their…several MLS Cups (think it was 2007), Twellman and Noonan did a bit in the staged player introductions, something involving light choreography, and with a nod to cheerleading. It was dumb and funny and that's why I've always genuinely liked this particular team, probably more than any one I've ever supported. The plucky underdogs were coming good, dammit. So, seeing that team reach its crowning achievement after running into all those walls and for all those years…and then they hit another wall 71 seconds later.
Let's just say I re-evaluated the relationship between spectator sports and my personal happiness.
Ricardo Clark, ageless wonder...
ReplyDelete